a mid-morning picnic

The hot humidity has been bearing down on us as the temps have been above ninety-degrees. It finally came to the point yesterday when I broke down and shut the windows and screen door and turned on the air conditioner. It takes a lot to make me do that.

A summer breeze is one of my most favorite things. It gets pretty windy up here on this knoll we call home, and we usually get a nice cross breeze through our main living area when I have the front windows and the back French doors open.

Yesterday, though, when I opened up the windows, I didn't feel a cross breeze at all. It felt more like a hot, sticky, muggy cloud entering the house.

Hmmm. But I love the hot, sticky days. Yes I do. And so on days like today, when it's up over ninety and the humidity is so bad it makes your chest feel heavy, I do have such a hard time not going outdoors. I've heard in the south that during the summer months, people stay indoors between the hours of 9am and 8pm just because it's so excruciatingly hot. I get that. I do. But when you only get  a few short months of warm weather, well, it seems a shame to stay cooped up all day in an air-conditioned house. I have the other eight months of the year to do that.

So yesterday, despite the oppressive heat and humidity, we filled up a tray with stove-popped popcorn and bowls and headed into the shade for a nice mid-morning picnic. Our trees, having only been recently planted by us after we built twelve years ago, are still pretty small and don't permit for much shade. We do, however, have a nice shady spot over near the edge of the woods that has always been perfect, cool, and shady.

After spreading out an afghan, we enjoyed our bowls of popcorn and chatted about life, Bible school songs, and other such things. Midi joined us, of course, and used her gorgeous puppy eyes to beg for some popcorn for herself. (Which she is very good at doing.) Ian did some cloud-watching while Lily played on the swing.

We even had a wonderful breeze that made the picnic quite enjoyable. Eventually we packed everything up and headed back into the house.

It was a wonderful, well-spent hour. Definitely worth braving the heat and humidity.

the breath of summer

Toads. Lily has a "pet" family of toads. A toad family that seems to keep growing by the day. They live in the window well of one of our downstairs' windows, which has been a complete joy to Lily. There is also a tree frog that lives down in there. One big happy family of amphibians. And one happy, happy girl keeping watch over them.

I have been devoting a lot of time to syringe-feeding and watering one of our English Angora rabbits, Snowball. She developed "head tilt" last Friday. I took her to our vet on Saturday, and he said that she had a middle ear infection which was most likely the cause of it. I was thankful for that since the other causes of head tilt in rabbits are more serious health conditions such as stroke and nervous system disorders. Since her head is so severely tilted to the one side, she cannot eat or drink on her own so Lily and I have to give her food and water via a syringe. I'm also medicating her twice a day with an antibiotic to treat the ear infection as well as meclizine to help the poor bunny with the horrid dizziness. She looks so pitiful, such a sad sight. I'm praying that this helps her.

Brad and I took the 2.5 hour drive north to see Sergei at his school yesterday. We left after Sunday School, picked up some food, and ate on the way. I spent most of the drive crocheting. And, of course, we chatted the whole way. It was nice. We hardly have any time to ourselves.

Our visit with Sergei went great. We stayed for several hours, until dinnertime, and then we drove into the nearby "city" and ate dinner on the bay of Lake Erie. We walked around a bit, grabbed two Caffe Americanos from Starbucks and then drove to Presque Isle and drove around the isle. We were running out of time in the day and knew we still had a 2.5 hour drive home so we only got out once to quickly check out one of the beaches and then started our drive home. We talked the whole way home, and I, of course, crocheted until it was too dark to see. It was a good day.

Our church's vacation Bible school starts tonight. I co-direct and lead the opening/closing portions of the night's events so it will be a very busy week. The kids always have such a blast. Who am I kidding, the adults have a blast too! We're all looking forward to it!

And I can't say enough how much I am really enjoying these summer days. Last week, Brad and I sat out on the deck after dark and watched the fireflies lighting up the fields. It was an amazing sight. I really wanted to capture the sight on camera so I could share it with all of you, but cameras just don't have the ability to capture the true beauty of fields full of fireflies. It was like our own private light show. A light show synchronized to the call of the crickets. I love summer in the country.